How to Make Child Category Visible

  • Unknown's avatar
    srbowm · Member ·

    I need to know how to make content under a child category visible. Or perhaps ‘child category’ is not what I need to organize as I want.

    I want a sub-section under Canada showing contact info for politicians because it is too much for one post; there will be many posts in this section. To this end, I set up a child category called Politician Directory. The parent category is Canada. I made a test post at https://sarahbowmansite.wordpress.com/2022/02/25/test/ to see if it works. But it does not show under the parent Category Canada.

    How do I fix this?

    WP.com: Yes
    Correct account: Yes

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    That’s because your post doesn’t have the Canada category assigned, only the Politician Directory category:

    https://d.pr/i/TWWJg4

    In other words, you need to select both the parent and the child category, if you want the post listed under both.

    Let me know if you have any questions about this.

  • Unknown's avatar
    srbowm · Member ·

    Thanks. I fixed that now but it still doesn’t show the way I want it to. Is there a way to make the child categories show on the Parent category? I posted a screenshot on https://sarahbowmansite.wordpress.com/2022/02/25/test/ to show what I mean. Scroll to “Screenshot, Feb. 26 2022.”

    I’d like if I can tell readers to click on Canada (parent category) to find the Politician Directory link (child category). Currently, the way it is set up, all the child category posts are mixed in with all the parent category posts.

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Thanks for explaining. By the way, if you want to share screen shots with us, you can just upload them directly to your media library and we can see them there, or you can use a tool like snipboard.io to share it here in the forums. So you don’t need to publish a post sharing the screen shot with your readers as well :)

    As for your question, how things display on the category archive page is controlled by the theme. I don’t know of any WordPress theme that displays child categories on category pages for the parent category in this way, so to have your subcategory display there, you’d need to modify an existing theme to include that information. Specifically, you’d need to modify the PHP files that control category archive pages.

    On WordPress.com that’s only possible using a child theme on our Business Plan, but additionally we don’t provide support for this type of customization, so you’d need to hire a developer to help you with the code.

    But there’s an alternative option: Instead of using the category archive page, use a normal static pages with the blog posts block, set to display posts from your various categories. In other words, you can manually create custom category pages for your site.

    Above the blog posts block, you can then add your own heading block with the category’s name, and below that a block listing your child categories and linking to them where appropriate.

    As a final step you’ll then add these custom category pages to your menu.

    You can find details on how the Blog Posts block works here:

    https://wordpress.com/en/support/wordpress-editor/blocks/blog-posts-block/

  • Unknown's avatar
    srbowm · Member ·

    Thank you for all this information. I will take a close look at your suggested link and try it out. If I have more questions I will post them here.

  • Unknown's avatar
    srbowm · Member ·

    When I downloaded “Blog Posts” block, it showed my three most recent blog posts. That is not what I want! The instructions at https://wordpress.com/support/wordpress-editor/blocks/blog-posts-block/#add-the-blog-posts-block say:

    “Use the Display Settings to control which posts are displayed in the block.”

    I cannot find any “Display Settings,” nor any of the other things in that section of the instructions. I posted another screenshot at https://sarahbowmansite.wordpress.com/2022/02/25/test/ at Screenshot 2, Feb. 26 2022. It shows you what options I have for the blog posts block. What am I doing wrong? I don’t know HTML.

    I posted it there because I cannot post screenshots here. There is no link for doing so.

  • staff-doublebassd · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    The Display Settings module is on the right side of the edit screen as demonstrated on the screenshot of my test blog below:

    There is an option to enable Choose Specific Posts under that module. Click to enable that and you should be good to go.

    Let me know if you have any other questions or issues.

    Thanks

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